


Matters of Luck and Blogging

by roseisreturning



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe-Tumblr, Alternate Universe-Writers, F/M, Tumblr AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 01:11:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseisreturning/pseuds/roseisreturning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Rose Tyler meets failing author the Doctor on Tumblr and falls possibly a little bit in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Matters of Luck and Blogging

It’s all a bit of a matter of luck, in retrospect. He doesn’t think his to be good, not at first, and if hers had been better she might never had found him. There’s a minor fire at work, one day, and she’s sure she’ll be the one thrown under the bus, with the grudge Trisha Delaney’s got on her. She’s already bracing herself for the news.

She’s looking for a bit on A-Levels at first, and after that it’s all a bit of coincidence. Careless mistake, not quite focused, she leaves in the previous query (what was it? something on physics? funny, now, how little of it she actually remembers) as she adds in something on the hospital.

And that’s when he pops up. Her Doctor. Well, _the_ Doctor. That’s all he ever gives, even later. Mind, the name she uses, could’ve been a six-year-old. (“Badwolf” is hardly the height of brilliance.)

Still, when she sends him—as the lingo seems to be— _an ask,_ he answers her, and kindly.

He’d struck her, from that blog of his, as a bit of a dick at first. Arrogant and a bit of a know-it-all and all of that. Rose Tyler isn’t one to kid herself, but she can’t help but think that maybe she’s the exception.

It’s ridiculous, of course, but Rose Tyler is nineteen and she still has just enough hope to think that maybe she is.

She gets a notification by email a day later that he’s begun following her, which seems a bit weird to her, as she’s hardly the sort to be chatting about the latest news in the field.

[badwolf asked you: Didn’t you say this was a work thing?]

[badwolf asked you: I mean, no plans to be analyzing our universe’s structure or anything…]

[badwolf asked you: Not that there’s anything wrong with that. long way off from working in henricks is all.]

And so goes the stream-of-consciousness messaging.

[thedoctor answered you: Haven’t got anyone monitoring my activity, if that’s what you’re worried about. Made that much money and I wouldn’t need a blog.]

She doesn’t think she believes him, but she wants to. So she smiles a bit, and types up her reply in five hundred characters or less.

She’s got an answer when she gets home that night, and the very same the next. Sometimes it is something about the book or at least vaguely related to it. Most times it’s not.

It’s weird, really, because she has friends, proper friends with proper names and lives that she knows half a thing about. But it’s nice, talking to him. And somewhere along the way, she thinks that maybe she’s fallen in love with him.

Which is all horribly wrong, of course.

She has a _boyfriend_. An actual, in-the-flesh boyfriend.

An actual, in-the-flesh boyfriend with a very nice computer. But that would be bad. Then, if she’s not allowed to look at what he’s been doing…

(She uses it sixteen times before she worries he’ll catch on. He never does, which makes her feel a little guiltier than she’d like. Rose starts using her own after that.)

Four-and-a-half months pass before she disregards safety entirely.

[thedoctor asked you: Let’s say—and this is only hypothetically—that within the next, say, four to eight weeks, that if sales are consistent, there is the possibility of the introduction of a, well, blogging supervisor. In this completely hypothetical situation, your reaction would be what?]

[badwolf answered you: Completely hypothetically?]

[thedoctor asked you: Perhaps not entirely hypothetically.]

She’d laughed a bit at that one.

[badwolf answered you: I’d ask if I could phone you sometime, I suppose.]

(After they’ve had a few jokes on it all, she ends up doing quite a bit of this.)

It’s a weird thing, hearing his actual voice actually talking for the first time. She’s not even sure how she’d imagined it, but being able to put some sort of distinctive tone to his words was such an alien thing to her that she hadn’t quite realized how much she’d wanted to.

She likes it better, talking. More personal. He’s the opposite. He would be, of course, being the author, the very thing that had led her to him.

So he sends her a message about twenty minutes after they’ve finished talking for the umpteenth time.

[the doctor asked you: Have you heard, by the way, that it is happening? That is, I’m getting a supervisor of sorts. Nothing major, mind you, but it’s probably best that I’m not sending messages to, well, you… just considering how it would look. Is that rude? sorry about that. Can I text you? I know we’ve just got off the phone, but you know how it is. Bit better through the written word. If you’d rather not… I suppose I should just get it out right now before I’m stuck saying it aloud and ruining it all: Rose Tyl]

She never knows whether there’s a second part that never got through or if he simply hadn’t realized he’d hit the limit. She doesn’t ask him. She doesn’t even think she replies.

When he calls her a week later, she swears to god he can hear her smiling the whole way through, right up until they’re saying their goodbyes and she stops just short of finishing that sentence for him.

They don’t speak for some time after that, not beyond a few odd texts. There’s not been any sort of argument, and if they’d ever been together, rose decides, they still are.

For her, work’s been hell, and Trisha’s sure to get her sacked within the month. From what she’s gathered, work for the doctor’s never been better. The blog’s been gathering traffic and the book’s sales are soaring. She’s happy for him, really happy, but some horrible part of her is the tiniest bit bitter.

It evaporates three weeks later when he texts her with the news. The doctor is doing book signings, and three of them are in London. He’s been given a little under a week there, but, oh god, she’d give the world for thirty seconds with him.

But all she has to do is stop by before work.

It’s a horrible time for a signing, and she’s a bit earlier than justifiable, so there’s hardly anyone else there. She can see the display, of course, banner and table and all of that, and it all looks a little sad with no one there. Not even him.

In that moment, she is tempted to run.

She is the next, too. Tempted to run and to shout and to make a scene. Because he is there, actually there, and he is talking with some employee who Rose doesn’t know so that she cannot actually see his face, but it is him, and Rose is certain.

She tries to keep from creating too much of a stir, but she can tell that she’s walking faster than she should be when he turns around to look at her.

She feels like she should be embarrassed, but she realizes that he is kind of _beaming_ at her, so she doesn’t really think about it any further.

“Hello,” she says when she reaches him.

“Hello.”

And she is not really sure whether he is a hugging sort of person, but Rose Tyler is definitely a hugging sort of person, and she has never been happier in her life, so she hugs him without any thought at all.

Which maybe wasn’t the best idea, because she doesn’t quite start thinking before she whispers one last thing before she hears him take a long breath. It is in the next second that the employee who Rose doesn’t know interrupts them.

“Sorry,” she says, looking uncomfortably at Rose. “The signing’s not until a bit later.”

“Oh, this is Rose Tyler!” the Doctor tells her, like this should mean something. “She’s my—well… She’s my plus-one.”

“I’m not,” says rose. “Just stopping by.”

“I’ll need him in a few, if that’s all right?”

“Course, yeah. Could we… have a minute?”

The girl nods, but Rose can’t help but notice how near to them she’s remaining. For all she knows, it’s just part of the job, but her closeness feels like an invasion of privacy. Then, they’ve never known anything but just the two of them.

Rose tries to laugh, but it ends up sounding even more forced than it is.

He looks desperate to help her. “Anyway…”

“Long time, no see,” she says, which he genuinely laughs at. “Look, I’ve got to get into work, but you’ll be here a while, yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah. If you want to—?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’ve got the place?”

“Yeah. And I won’t be—?”

“Nah,” he says.

“See ya!”

And that’s all. She goes to work, and it is neither wonderful nor unbearable. He goes on signing, and there are actually quite a few people, and they are all very quiet, and he wishes Rose could be there.

Rose meets him in his hotel, which seems vaguely shady, and they don’t really do much of anything at all.

She takes his hand, eventually, and that’s when he finally finishes that sentence of his from what seems like so very long ago.

She’s got the chance to help him pack up four days later. Trisha’s finally got rid of her, and of course he starts talking as though he believes it’s his own fault.

“It’s been coming for ages,” she assures him. “Nothing to do…”

Maybe it doesn’t work, or maybe he’s just that sort of person, but he keeps going on. “Really, if you need anything—anything. Money… someone to talk to… somewhere to go…”

“Doctor…”

He comes to the point where he’s pleading with her to accept, and it kind of hits her that maybe she’s not the one who needs someone to help her.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Would you mind doing the rest of the tour with me?”

“One condition,” she tells him, even though there is nothing she’d rather do, “if we’re going to… share—it’s got to be in London.”

He agrees without hesitation.

The Doctor ends up missing the scheduled cab, so they’re forty-three minutes late to the next city without a moment’s sleep between them.

The rest of the tour’s no different, nor any other day after that, and she wouldn’t trade it for all the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Previously published on the blog with even poorer grammar. Now features impressively capital letters with just as many run-ons. Brought to you by girl power mixes and genuine awkward meetings in bookstores.


End file.
